There’s a distinct difference between advertising and marketing – more specifically content marketing. We know that ‘content is king’ and ‘engagement is everything,’ but talking with your audience and not at your audience is the name of the game.
To truly know and understand your audience, you must figure out what motivates them and what influences their purchasing decisions. The best way to get to know your customer is to look at existing marketing and sales data, and create a number of ‘customer profiles’. With this info, you can shape your content marketing strategy and develop your approach. It may seem like a difficult task to ‘break the fourth wall’ of marketing, but you must become the customer in order to effectively market to the customer.
Below are a few great tips and starting points to help you start your next amazing content marketing campaign.
Content Creation
Delivering quality, engaging content is the most important part of your overall strategy.
Your audience has a need that you are fulfilling with content that keeps them not only engaged, but also encourages them to share. Make your content so good that your readers’ won’t be able to keep it to themselves.
- Brainstorm – have an all-hands meeting to help develop topics and throw ideas around. The more the merrier; you never know where, or from who, that next great idea will come from.
- Write – write, and never stop. Write down an idea the moment it enters your head. You never know when you may be able to apply it!
- Think creatively – Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience – what would you want to read? What appeals to you? By generating content with this mindset, you will find it easier to write in a conversational and engaging tone – remember you’re talking with your audience as opposed to talking at them.
Community Management and Monitoring
- Stay on top of conversations that are relevant to your brand by monitoring brand keywords on social media. This tactic can also help you head off a potential crisis.
- Join the conversation! This is one of the most effective ways to build your social community. Jump in a conversation about your product or brand and offer some new, useful information to all involved.
- Communicate – Social media will become defacto customer service, and you will have to embrace it. Communicate clearly with customers looking to you for advice and most importantly, solve their problem – it will go a long way.
Measuring and Tracking Performance
- Create goals and KPIs, so you can measure your efforts and find out what works and what doesn’t work.
- Benchmark your content and performance against yourself and your competitors – it’s the best way to keep track of your success.
- Assign a measurable data point to each of your goals. Setting goals is great, but you will need to be able to measure against something to really determine if you’ve reached them.
Does your head hurt yet? Good. That mean’s you’ve learned something! Starting off a new content or social campaign is not an easy task, but it is certainly attainable. Developing a strategy and content is one of the coolest parts of being a marketer. We don’t sit in cubes and mash away at Excel sheets all day – we get to flex creative muscles on a daily basis!
Here’s to hoping you make it out of your next strategy session in one piece!
How do you get to know your digital audience? Share your secrets below!